Life with 14 dogs

Angus – He’s Sexy and He Knows it!

If he were human, Angus would earn the Sexiest Man Alive title every year. I know it, everyone who knows him knows it, and more importantly, he knows it. No picture really does him justice.

We didn’t pick Angus because of his looks. I told The Crabby Man to pick the pup out of the litter of tiny tan and white blobs. He pointed to the one closest to me and said “That one. Can we go now?”. Either The Crabby Man has some kind of gift, or we just got lucky.

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Thing about Angus, he LOVES the ladies. Doesn’t matter what species, if you are female, Angus checks his breath on his paw and saunters up with a “How YOU doin’?”. Kind of like Joey on the sit com Friends. If you are female, doesn’t matter what species, you will respond to the flirting.

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Angus used to get loose from the yard to go visiting and in doing so gained a pretty sizeable fan base. No one ever called on his tags, or responded to our posters, for quite a while after Angus arrived on their doorstep. Nope, they would visit with him for a while first. When having to say good-bye to him after the arrival of The Crazy Dog Lady, every last one couldn’t resist just one more grabbing of a handful of fluffy chest hair.

Because even hotties have embarrassing pics sometimes!

Flirty as he was, and with all the groupies he had, all related to his personality, he was also cursed with near perfect Corgi-ness. His vet told me Angus was an excellent example of the breed and would make a great stud. What I heard was “I get to be a Grandma!”. For that reason, he was not neutered as I searched for the perfect mother to my grand puppy. With all of Angus’ fans, Momma Corgi could have a litter of 12, and having 1 stay with us, the others would have to be placed by lottery or to the highest bidders. Many people had already said that if he was bred, they wanted a puppy.

Fear not readers! Despite his escaping, there was not one case of stumpy legged coyotes and no posters or advertisements for free stumpy legged mutt puppies. The area was relatively small back then. If Angus had puppies somewhere, I would have known about it.

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One fateful day, The Crabby Man brought home what we were pretty sure was a dog he found wandering down a dark road in the predawn hours. It was a new female, species unimportant, in Angus’ house, so of course he set about working his magic. Only problem was, she was unspayed and in heat (Hey, in our defense, we didn’t realize it until we got home from work!). Way too much temptation for an unneutered Corgi. No one claimed the unidentifiable female creature, and she remains with us as our Gracie. She was spayed with all the professionalism, compassion and care as can be expected in a veterinary office, while Angus was neutered in the back of a box truck mobile clinic called Nip and Snip. It did not go well. Angus spent the next week lying on his back with an ice pack sitting where his manlies once were.

Gracie is the most submissive of all of our kids, unless of course we are talking about Angus. He is no longer permitted to flirt with females of any species in her presence. If he even thinks of getting out of line in that respect, Gracie WILL put him in his place. In other words, the one and only time Angus got lucky, he got neutered, had to marry the girl, and she is bossy.

I can’t give you a video blurb of Angus because Gracie wants him modest. We can’t get more than a second or 2 of the camera on Angus before Gracie runs over and starts humping him.

Because of Angus’ roaming ways early on, his misfortune at the box truck butcher shop, and a more recent adventure that will be the subject of its own blog entry later, he is not able to boast the same ‘easy life’ that Maude can. But like Maude, the minute he became one of us, he became one of us forever. He just has more stories to tell.

I want to end this bio with a couple of disclaimers:

Never again will we seek out a purebred puppy. If I had it all to do over again, of course, I would go back and get my Angus. But looking around at what is laying at my feet at this very moment, there is no reason to promote breeding when there are so many Perfection Hounds (A little bit of the best of everything) needing homes.

Also, at the time Gracie came in, I was actively seeking a Momma Corgi for my grandpuppy. But grandpuppy didn’t have to be purebred, so if Gracie was pregnant, from her would come my grandpuppy. But we had another problem: What do to with Gracie? No one claimed her. No one wanted her. If we were actively looking to get a grandpuppy, then by definition we were actively looking to add another dog to the family. The grandpuppy was not here, but Gracie was. End of story.

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